Recent Opinions

The world is full of unsolved problems. It is also full of problems for which solutions already exist, if we only leverage them. When we slow down for a minute, consider the available options, and more carefully assess the consequences of various modes of action, we have a better chance of directing our efforts where they ought to go–for the good of ourselves and the issues we face.

Matthew Cohen ’18 and Johnathan Bowes ’15 debate whether Puerto Rico should become the 51st state in the United States. Cohen urges us to question the previous votes in Puerto Rico as well as its tremendous debt while Bowes argues the US should respect the will of Puerto Ricans in whatever they choose.

Jimmy Fowkes ’14 battles cancer, reflects on Livestrong experience

Jimmy Fowkes ’14, currently undergoing chemotherapy for his fourth bout of cancer, has been an active volunteer for the Livestrong foundation for nearly a decade. Despite Lance Armstrong’s recent doping scandal, Fowkes’ support of Armstrong’s former charity is unwavering. Here, Fowkes is shown with his younger sister at the Rose Bowl. (Courtesy of Jimmy Fowkes)

Sitting outside the CoHo in a black Portland Trail Blazers T-shirt with coffee in hand, Jimmy Fowkes ’14 could easily pass for your average Stanford student.

A self-proclaimed atheist majoring in religious studies, Fowkes hails from Portland, Ore. He lives in Potter House and spends much of his Sundays with his friends watching football, his favorite sport.

Fowkes has also fought a continuous battle against brain cancer for the past seven years.

As a 13-year-old, Fowkes was diagnosed with medulloblastoma — a highly malignant brain tumor — on Jan. 11, 2006. Fowkes said that his initial reaction to the news was a mix of shock and fear.

“I was terrified,” he said. “Because when you hear you have cancer, you think you’re going to die.”

After his diagnosis, he spent six days in the intensive care unit of his local hospital. During that time, Fowkes’ father signed him up for the Livestrong Challenge, the signature fundraising event for seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s nonprofit organization Livestrong, which seeks to help people affected by cancer. The Challenge consisted of a bike ride anywhere from 15 to 100 miles, with all proceeds being donated to cancer support or research.

“Lance [Armstrong] was really the only cancer survivor my dad had ever heard of or knew of, so he signed us up,” Fowkes said.

What started as simply a fitness goal quickly blossomed into something much more.

“When I was in recovery I ended up reading Lance’s book [It’s Not About the Bike], and everything that he had done really inspired me to fundraise,” Fowkes said.

Instead of simply paying the $500 minimum to participate in the challenge, Fowkes turned to fundraising, soliciting his immediate community of relatives and friends for contributions to his cause.

“The response was incredible,” he said. “I ended up raising something like $33,000 in my first year. I just really realized how much support I had from my friends and family and how much they cared about me and wanted to help.”

His success fundraising that year did not go unnoticed. As he hit $17,000, Fowkes got a phone call from Renée Nicholas, a Livestrong staff member.

“She said, ‘Lance is doing an event over at the 24-Hour Fitness [in Portland], and Lance wants to meet Jimmy,’” Fowkes said. “So I went over to the 24-Hour Fitness and got to meet him.”

Nicholas has since become close with Fowkes through his continued involvement with Livestrong.

“I really just had an immediate connection and a tremendous amount of admiration for his courage and intellect and really just general spirit,” Nicholas said. “He was a really remarkable person, and that was evident even at a really young age.”

In the following years, Nicholas and the other staff members at Livestrong became an indispensable source of support, guidance and friendship for Fowkes and his family.

“Going into it, I think I just was kind of alone and didn’t know anyone else with cancer,” Fowkes said. “I had had lots of support from my family and friends and everything, but [Livestrong] was really the first time I could meet other cancer survivors and talk about their experiences.”

Allison Watkins, currently on the marketing team for Livestrong, also met Fowkes in 2006 through his first Livestrong Challenge.

“I think a lot of his success came from being really open and honest,” she said. “He was able, at a really young age, to tell his story and tell what was going on with his diagnosis. People were really drawn to that.”

However, Fowkes’ relationship with Armstrong was perhaps the most unique. Armstrong even hosted the Fowkes family when they went to Europe during the Tour de France one year.

“When we were over in Italy and France, we went and saw his tour, he took me on the team bus and introduced me to his people,” Fowkes said. “He’s a really nice guy, and I don’t think that the media sees that side of him.”

Fowkes and Armstrong have remained close over the years even after Armstrong ended his professional racing career. Armstrong rode for Fowkes in the 2010 Tour of California, an 810-mile bike route during which Armstrong crashed only a few miles into the race. Coincidentally, Armstrong’s crash came the day he was first accused of doping by Tour de France teammate Floyd Landis.

Fowkes declined to comment on Armstrong’s drug scandal, though he did express disappointment at the fact that Armstrong has been depicted by the media as a “bad person” despite his work with cancer survivors.

“He’s been labeled as a bad person,” Fowkes said. “I won’t tell you whether he’s a bad person or a good person, but I think there’s a side of Lance that people really get to see, and I think that it’s a side that’s been really good to me and also really, really cares about helping cancer survivors.”

Fowkes said that Armstrong’s departure from Livestrong after the scandal broke had upset him.

“I think to a certain extent the foundation needs him, and to a certain extent he needs the foundation as well,” he said.

Despite this controversy, Fowkes insisted that Armstrong will continue to serve as a role model for cancer survivors across the world.

“He was a huge inspiration, especially when I was first diagnosed,” Fowkes said. “He had this approach to battling cancer as more of a fight, instead of just ‘I’ll get treatment and hopefully it works.’ So it’s been a goal of mine throughout my treatment to stay involved with my regular life as much as possible.”

Nearing normalcy

Fowkes returned to middle school two weeks after being released from the hospital after his first diagnosis.

In high school, Fowkes was an honor roll student, a member of the junior varsity soccer team and an active participant within Livestrong. Since his first fundraiser, Fowkes has raised more than $200,000 for the foundation.

During his senior year of high school, Fowkes was accepted into Stanford, his first choice. Watkins and Nichols reflected with pride on his accomplishment.

“In my cube, I have a picture of Jimmy and his parents on the day that he went to Stanford, because that was a huge moment for all of us,” Watkins said. “He’s been through so much, and we didn’t know if he’d ever make it to college.”

Nicholas visited Fowkes at Stanford for the first time three weeks ago.

“I can imagine what it must have felt like for his parents, as someone who cares very much for him, and saw him go through a tremendous amount of hardship and pain, and do it with such bravery, such fight, and such spirit,” she said. “To see him walking out of his dorm dressed like any college kid, knowing what he had to do to get there — I was overwhelmed with emotion.”

Fowkes acknowledged that balancing his life as a college student and cancer survivor has put things into perspective.

“I think [cancer] really made me see things differently,” he said. “It made me care a lot more about other people, and I think it made me a better person.”

Although Fowkes hopes to major in religious studies, he doesn’t plan on continuing this field of study after college. Instead, he emphasized his desire to focus on providing encouragement for others with cancer.

“Ever since I’ve been diagnosed, it’s always been really important to me to support others battling cancer because I’ve been through it and I hate the fact that other people have to go through the same thing that I went through,” Fowkes said. “So it’s something I’m very passionate about, and I could definitely see myself getting involved with some sort of charity.”

Fowkes suffered bouts of his cancer at ages 13, 15 and 19. During the start of his junior year, he underwent daily chemotherapy sessions in an effort to combat the disease. His cancer metastasized to other parts of his brain and his spinal cord.

“People look at him as a hero and an inspiration because he’s wise beyond his years and he’s accomplished so much and been through so much at a young age,” Watkins said. “I think he’s really understands and embraces what it means to live strong.”

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Carrying forward the interest in contemplation both at Windhover and during Contemplation by Design week, the Office for Religious life and HIP are collaborating to offer a labyrinth walking fundamentals [...]

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Carrying forward the interest in contemplation both at Windhover and during Contemplation by Design week, the Office for Religious life and HIP are collaborating to offer a labyrinth walking fundamentals workshop. This 2-session program will provide you with knowledge of the rich history and stress reduction and resilience-building benefits of the contemplative practice of labyrinth walking. Each session will begin in the classroom followed by a practicum of walking the Windhover labyrinth. Class will be held rain or shine. Please dress accordingly. Please note: registration required for this free class.

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COMFORT WOMEN WANTED brings to light the memory of 200,000 young women, referred to as “comfort women,” who were systematically exploited as sex slaves in Asia during World War II, and increases awareness of sexual violence against women during wartime. It is based on interviews with Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Filipino, and Dutch “comfort women” survivors and a former Japanese soldier from WWII conducted by the filmmaker, Chang-Jin Lee, a Korean-born visual artist from New York City.

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We are a social action VSO and bake challah bread on Thursdays at Hillel in the back building (across from the Haas Center). The proceeds this week go to MAZON: [...]

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We are a social action VSO and bake challah bread on Thursdays at Hillel in the back building (across from the Haas Center). The proceeds this week go to MAZON: a national non-profit working to end hunger among all faiths and backgrounds. We work with a variety of groups around campus, including social action groups, interfaith groups, and Greek life. Everyone is welcome to come join us in making challah.

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The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics announces the second mini-course by Stanford physics faculty on recent fundamental advances in theoretical physics. The winter quarter's lectures will be by Professor Sean [...]

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The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics announces the second mini-course by Stanford physics faculty on recent fundamental advances in theoretical physics. The winter quarter’s lectures will be by Professor Sean Hartnoll.

Black holes have the remarkable property of irreversibility: if you fall into a black hole you can’t get out (classically). This immediately suggested a connection with the other famous irreversibility in physics: the law of increase of entropy. Since the 70s, this connection between black holes and thermodynamic systems has been fleshed out in increasing detail and has lead to surprising conclusions. I will give an introduction to a recent body of work showing how black holes can in fact be used to shed light on exotic materials of interest in condensed matter physics, including the still-not-understood high temperature superconductors.

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THE LADY ONSTAGE explores the life and work of Olga Knipper, a name unfamiliar to most, but perhaps best known as “Chekhov’s wife”. Olga was a key creative genius in [...]

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THE LADY ONSTAGE explores the life and work of Olga Knipper, a name unfamiliar to most, but perhaps best known as “Chekhov’s wife”. Olga was a key creative genius in the history of modern theatre; she was not only the originator of the leading female roles in Chekhov’s four major plays, but also became the de facto chief representative of the Moscow Art Theater when they toured the United States. THE LADY ONSTAGE takes us into the psyche of an actress at the moment when theater changed forever, giving us an inside perspective on the radical choices artists make in the name of Art and Love.

March’s Rough Reading presents an intimate reading of Erin Bregman’s new play in early draft form, offering audiences a rare opportunity to engage directly with the artistic process of bringing a play to life. Produced by Playwrights Foundation in partnership with the National Center for New Plays at Stanford.